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O, Christmas Tree!

When I was a small child, my mother came up with a great idea to help us all
have more of the Christmas spirit. She bought us each miniature
Christmas trees for our bedrooms. I often wonder if she had an ulterior
motive, in that we were all more interested in decorating our own tree,
and we left the big tree alone, but she's never answered that question
for me. Regardless, we each had our own tree, and we each had our own
very small box of ornaments. Every year, she would buy us an ornament to
symbolize the past year. I was a pre professional ballet student, and so
many of my ornaments have a ballet motif. The year that I began musical
theater, she bought me an ornament to symbolize this. The year I got my
drivers license my ornament was a car. She's kept this tradition all
along, buying me an ornament each year. It's a tradition that I look
forward to, and I've kept it going for myself.

When I moved out on my own, it was comforting to have my tree and a well established set of ornaments to decorate that reminded me of home. When we first married, we got an ornament to symbolize that. The first Christmas with our first child is symbolized by a yawning woman in a bathrobe holding a baby. This past year, I went to the Harley-Davidson school, and learned to drive a
motorcycle. So this years ornament was, I'm sure you can guess,
Harley-Davidson related.

In looking at my tree, I can look back and
remember many many things from my life. There are coffee cup ornaments,
football team ornaments, and ornaments that I bought for no other reason
than that they were beautiful and spoke to me at that particular time
in my life.

Several years ago, I bought small trees for my children's rooms. My
children who are teenagers now haven't bothered to put their tree up
this year, but I know they'll come back to it. Each of my children has
their own box of ornaments, and they symbolize events in their lives as
well. It's super fun to open the ornament boxes with them, and talk
about the things that have occurred for them. The year my daughter went
to occupational therapy, she got an ornament that looked like one of the
toys that she finally mastered. It's a tradition that I hope and pray
my children will remember their whole lives, and start with their own
children.

It may be a silly, small thing, but to me, the Christmas tree is one of
the best representations of our time together as a family.

That really sounds like a fun tradition! My boys both started their next phase in life this year - my older son started Kindergarten, my younger son started preschool. It really would be fun to get them ornaments symbolizing that.

My favorite ornaments would be any my boys made & the ones I got them for their first Christmas ornament.

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